Ultimately this is a love letter to a place, and I’m tracing its edge. These edges are spherical. Each model of a sphere contains the possibility of a universe. A sphere here can be both geometry (a solid round figure where every point on its surface is equidistant from its center) and sociology (as an area of interest). This sphere contains The California F-scale, a personality test that was created for the Studies in Prejudice Series, also known as the Berkeley studies. The F in F scale has come to stand for many things in developing this work. Originally F is for Fascist. But how does one measure personality? Turns out, with error. I’ve taken the Means and Discriminatory Powers list from this study on a series of walks along a certain number of readings. It has become a grid over the surface of which a subject moves. I read it with different lenses: as a poem, as a recipe for disaster, a random list of words, an omen.
Ultimately though, this is a love letter to the sphere. All future thinking requires a grounded material reality. How things hang together is a form of philosophy. To produce objects is to channel how things are made, one’s relation to it, and how it is placed. We make up scales and hold them next to things. Measured here is: an electrical outlet, 4x6, scale of fantasy, scale of abstraction, text and its relativity, one subject over or under another, one object over or under another. Time is counted in 2, 12, 24, 7 and 3:33.
Merideth Hillbrand (1988, USA) lives and works between Los Angeles and Toronto. Hillbrand studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and University of California, Riverside and later participated in a residency at University of Texas at Austin. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at galleries and institutions such as University of Texas at Austin, ESCOLAR, Santa Rosa, New Low, Los Angeles, and Gene’s Dispensary, Los Angeles. Her work has also been included in national group exhibitions, including at Leroy’s, Los Angeles, Human Resources, Los Angeles, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.